FORMER Tory candidate in the north-east Jimmy Buchan, the skipper star of the TV Trawlermen series, has voiced his concerns about how the onset of Brexit could leave the fish processing sector in the north-east critically short of migrant labour on which the entire industry effectively depends.

It is doubtlessly a cross-party concern, with SNP minister Fergus Ewing voicing the same fear.

With Westminster also talking about changing the EU farm subsidy focus from acreage amount to arability efficiency, this appears to suggest a touch of socialism creeping into Tory minds and must therefore add to the uncertainty attending a Brexit future.

As if uncertainty hasn’t already been a feature of Brexit! What next? Perhaps a ban on big-league football transfers from abroad – because if the numbers of fish-processing workers and berry-pickers from abroad are made subject to restriction it would be politically impossible to justify the same not happening in what is, after all, just sport.
Ian Johnstone
Peterhead